After The Virus (3 page)

Still struck dumb, he watched Stupid haul the body back towards the bonfire. “It’s safer… safer to… to travel at night,” he finally said.

“Yup,” Big agreed as he crossed toward the motorcycles. Straddling one, he turned to say. ”They don’t make ‘em like you anymore, Tex.”

“My name is Will,” he offered.

“Well, Will, thanks for the morality lesson. We won’t be seeing you again.” Big drowned out his own laugh with the roar of his motorcycle.

∞

He watched until he couldn’t catch a glimpse of them on the horizon, then he scrubbed the blood off the veranda while the pyre burned.

CHAPTER THREE

RHIANNON

She’d found a wheelbarrow for the dog from one of those urban garden centers. The place seemed stripped of anything remotely food related. A motorcycle with a sidecar, even if she could drive one, would be too conspicuous. Her last group had figured that out the hard way.

The dog’s leg was dislocated. She certainly wasn’t a vet, but she could read. Finding medical books was as simple as opening the front door of an animal hospital. Stitching through actual flesh was gut wrenching. And still, even calculating for weight, she’d worried about the painkiller and antibiotic dosage.

She’d also found a tiny strawberry plant under the plastic mulch she’d salvaged as rain protection. Wasting precious time, she’d repotted it.

∞

She was headed to the haven of the mountains. They had no reason to follow, except revenge, which, she hoped, wasn’t worth it.
 

Then she saw the sign: REWARD FOR LIVE CAPTURE. The words a childlike scrawl in red paint, slashed across a billboard from her last modeling gig. The campaign itself was so recent she hadn’t cashed the cheque before the dying started. She’d never thought her eyes looked that blue in real life, but they sure did when her face was hawking mascara.
So… they’d recognized her.

She glanced down at her chipped fingernails. She was sure she didn’t resemble her last film; she’d spent the entire time in a wedding dress and wielding a gun. She wondered what the reward would be; valuables held no value now. This wasn’t the first time her face — and body — had gotten her in trouble. Even he had told her — he, her stepfather — that he only touched her because she was so beautiful. She was a prize, or a pricey piece of meat.

Rhiannon named the dog B.B. because the Rottie was just blood and bones when she found, rescued, and patched her up. B.B. didn’t mind the wheelbarrow.
 

They traveled evenings to early morning, and got off the highway ASAP. When you had no idea where you were going, time didn’t factor at all.

She hoped they’d assume she was heading down the coast to LA, but she hadn’t been there when the chaos really hit and wasn’t ever going back. She placed that life firmly behind her with every step she took.

∞

B.B. didn’t stay in the wheelbarrow for more than a few days, which was good, because despite all the Pilates, Rhiannon’s shoulders screamed.

Going was slow with B.B. limping. They stopped often for supplies, but never slept where they scavenged. Dog food was oddly easy to find. She tried to not let B.B. gorge, but it was difficult rationing a starving animal, and despite her injury, B.B. bulked up fast.

It was four days before they saw another human.

∞

Memory was a trap as sure as chain or concrete; one that she’d armored against even before she found herself living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; where haunting and terror were everyday events. It didn’t do to dwell, wasn’t a functional way for her at least, but some days, like today, with the sun warm on her back and B.B.’s nails click, click, clicking on the pavement, her mind wandered.

Often, when people got hint of the bits of terrible she’d confronted in her life, they wondered at the fact that she wasn’t lying in a basement somewhere with a needle in her arm and a hole in her soul.

Rhiannon couldn’t answer those survivor questions, couldn’t be a life coach or some sort of role model, because she had no idea what made her different, what made her brain different than others who had suffered. She had made the best of the situation, controlled it as much as possible, and walked away when she got the chance. Though some ties proved harder to break than others.

Sometimes the other person refused to let go.

In moments of weakness, she worried that the armor — all the years of protective layers built up around her heart and soul — had nothing underneath to protect.

Enough dwelling, Rhiannon. Keep on moving onward.
She had a plan — get away — and someone to protect — B.B. — that was as far as she needed to focus.

Except, except… the billboard haunted her. She had thought — when she had time to even think — that she could shed that image and become… what, she didn’t know, but something other than herself. But that billboard, the fact they hadn’t raped her, the fact they’d given her a guided tour on the way in. It felt…
planned? Contrived?
Maybe she was just paranoid after so many years of so many fan stalkers, only one of which had ever laid violent hands on her and she had to admit, if only to herself, that she had some culpability in that situation.

B.B. pressed a shoulder against her knee, and even before her brain cleared of its memory fog, Rhiannon could feel the tension rippling through the dog’s flank.

B.B. must have sensed the man about a mile before, because her nose was glued to the ground.

She, confident they’d left the city behind, had carelessly pushed their traveling farther into daylight.

He, the man, had laid traps.

B.B.’s questing nose dislodged a pile of ripped up, wilted wildflowers, and Rhiannon yanked the dog backwards seconds from triggering a wicked leghold trap. A trap big enough for a bear.

She froze, standing in the middle of the road with her fist clench around B.B.’s collar. Every muscle in her body screamed exposure. Sheer rock rose to her left and dropped into a massive river to her right.
No one was crazy enough to ride those rapids. Not anymore.

She tamped down on her flight instinct. She let her gaze wander farther up the road where seemingly random piles of leaves, weeds, and grass barely covered more traps. So he was a moron then, but obviously violent.

Whistling.

B.B. growled, her target uncertain but her belly low. Rhiannon finally unfroze, had sense enough to drop to the ground, and crawl to the cliff edge. B.B. followed.

He was a hundred feet below: naked, hairy and fishing.
Weren’t two of those three illegal?
Or at least they used to be. She’d be worried about that hook, as a man.

The idea of fresh salmon beckoned, but leg traps?
That’s a big no way, no how.

She tried to ease back, but then just as she thought she was out of sight, she dislodged some rock —
shale
, her useless brain offered — with a twist of her foot. In the endless second it took for rock to hit river rock, she wondered if she should put more stock in astrology and that doomsday horoscope she’d read before this bad run.

He saw her.

He shouted.

She ran.

She ran forward, not back, because she was miles past any decent place to hide. B.B. could barely keep up and wouldn’t be able to maintain this pace for long.

She twisted her ankle, fell, and bloodied her palms. B.B. whined through her panting.

She looked up to find her forehead inches from a trap.

Fucking bastard. Fuck, fuck, fucking bastard with his little shriveled dick.
She didn’t give a shit if that river was fed by a glacier or what.
 

This wasn’t the time to fall and stay down. That time had passed, years before this shit. If her mother hadn’t destroyed her, nothing would.

So she got up.

Only then did she see the path carved in the cliff. Unless he had a fucking elevator, they’d be gone long before he got here.

∞

He came for them that night, reeking of rotting fish and human waste. He hadn’t bothered to dress; perhaps clothing would have slowed down the plan that was evident by his engorged dick. It was, she noticed, as puny as she’d thought it would be.

He slunk in by the light of her embers, his belly low as he, crawling on all fours, stalked her. She’d expected him, but was still thrown by the sudden, full-body, vicious attack.

Of course, not as thrown as he was by the bear trap in her sleeping bag.

He screamed and thrashed, but still managed to show surprise when she swung down from the tree. Unbelievably, lust hardened his face even more than the pain. She didn’t take this as a compliment, knowing that any woman or maybe any warm body would do for this crazy. He considered himself a hunter, after all.

She was sorry to see that the sleeping bag softened the teeth of the trap. Unless it got infected, he probably wouldn’t lose the leg.
What a pity
.

“Get this the hell off me!” he demanded. “I wasn’t coming to kill you! I haven’t seen a… woman… talk… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I believe the common way a living being is forced to get out of this sort of mess is to chew their own leg off,” she sneered. “Try that.”

“Fucking bitch!”

B.B. lunged for his throat and Rhiannon half-heartedly held her off. Revoltingly, he fear-pissed; the spray soiled her runners.

“You’re right about the bitch part, on two counts, but certainly not the fucking.” And, leaving him to his hopefully dire fate, she pulled the still snapping and snarling B.B. away.

She always did like a great exit line, though she mourned the loss of a perfectly good sleeping bag.

CHAPTER FOUR

WILL

The crinkle of wrappers drew his attention. He guessed she was about nine; huddled in an aisle at the Drug Mart and inhaling chocolate bars. The absolute terror in her eyes made his stomach knot. This was what the world had become: a girl, mortally terrified, when she saw any man. He couldn’t think what the hell to say or do that wouldn’t be a threat.
Keep holding the rifle or put it down? Are you alone? Are you okay?
 

He was pretty sure that was blood caked underneath her ragged fingernails.

He finally settled for, “Hey, sorry to sneak up on you. I was just gathering some supplies. I live the next town over. My name is Will.”

She didn’t answer, but her grip on the Snickers bar eased. He continued, “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to pick up some shampoo and stuff.”

He eased back and crossed into the next aisle to stare at the still-stocked shelves. He didn’t need shampoo, but he added it to his box anyway. He could hear her gathering chocolate bars into the sack she wore slung across her shoulders, then silence. He sidestepped to the soap.

Aware of her tracking him, he slowly moved around the store. He fought the urge to grab, feed, and scrub her clean of the blood and bruises.

He briefly contemplated the barrettes and, after he turned the corner, he heard plastic torn and wondered if she had picked the pink ones. He was amazed she’d survived alone all these months, and then realized she probably hadn’t been on her own all this time.
Was this her home? Were her parents and siblings now stinking, bloated corpses in a nearby house? Did she still return to them at night? Who’d been feeding her? Or what had happened to her caretakers to force them to abandon her here? Or, even more sickeningly, whose clutches had she escaped?

He didn’t think he was up for this. There had been a few children in the survivor groups he drifted through, but he hadn’t taken any responsibility.

He paused in the magazine section and, briefly, wondered if the actress on the Vanity Fair cover still had eyes that blue even in death.

The girl’s eyes were dark like her matted hair. Will felt like a pedophile as he placed a coloring book and crayons in his now-full box.

She was waiting for him by the entrance, and he briefly wondered how she had gotten in when he’d struggled to prop open the automatic door. He smiled, and she didn’t return the gesture. She was clutching another Snickers bar and heavily weighing her options; trying to figure him.

“That’s my truck.” He gestured with the box toward his Ford, then stepped by her to load the box and the other supplies in the back.

He closed the tailgate just as he heard the passenger door slam. She buckled up, then sat, clutching her sack and staring straight ahead. He thought he might vomit. He wasn’t sure if it was the fear of hurting her further or the trust she’d so readily placed in him that made him ill.

He ripped open a box of granola bars and climbed into the truck. He placed the bars on the seat beside him and shifted the truck into gear.

“Might be stale,” he warned, then he ate one anyway.

She reached a tentative hand, caked in dirt and blood, to press play on the stereo. He’d been listening to this on the drive over, but now, the third verse of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” hit him in the gut. He finally got it. He clenched his jaw to quell the rising emotion. The girl bobbed her head along with the bass line. He’d never had an epiphany before.

In this moment, he chose to become the man he’d always wanted his father to be.

∞

It took one day and three Snickers bars to coax the girl out of the truck, then four more days to convince her that an upstairs bedroom was just as safe as the front hall closet. Will wasn’t too sure when she began, finally, to sleep a full night in the bed, but he didn’t manage to get her in the bath until he remembered he’d found some animal soaps in the grocery. He’d also offered her a choice between Star Wars and Barbie sheets. She picked Star Wars, and he wondered if she’d ever seen the movies.

He really didn’t know what he was doing. The people who’d built this home hadn’t exactly left self-help child rearing books lying around, but he figured she would need to feel safe alone before she would allow him to be her protector. So to that end, he put together a backpack under her watchful eye.

Will, pleased that he had collected extras, carefully placed all the survival supplies he had on hand on the old farm-style kitchen table. A mini first aid kit, solar blanket, batteryless flashlight, waterproof matches, water packs, and granola bars.